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OTTEWILL, THOMAS & CO.
The Ottewill company has long been recognised as
one of the best quality manufacturers of cameras and
photographic equipment of the 1850s and 1860s. The
Ottewill double folding camera is reputed to have been
the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s poem Hiawatha’s
Photographing (1857). Carroll’s camera was made by
Ottewill and supplied to Carroll by the London fi rm of
R. W. Thomas of Pall Mall.
The business of Thomas Ottewill was established
in 1851 and as such can be considered as one of the
earliest British specialist photographic manufacturers.
The business was listed fi rst at 24 Charlotte Terrace,
Copenhagen Street in Barnsbury, London, subsequently
expanding to numbers 23 and 24 for the remainder of
the fi rm’s existence. The London Post Offi ce Directory
fi rst records the fi rm from 1854 as Daguerreotype Ap-
paratus Manufacturers, a listing which was expanded
to Photographic Apparatus Manufacturers from 1856,
until the fi rm’s disappearance circa 1866.
The fi rm was listed as Ottewill & Morgan in 1855
before adopting the title Thomas Ottewill & Co from
1856–63. The following year it became Ottewill, Col-
lis & Co until it was last recorded in the directories in
1866, although from other sources the fi rm seems to
have remained active until 1868. The fi rm claimed in
1856 (Photographic Notes, 1 November 1856, np) to
‘have erected extensive workshops adjoining their for-
mer shops, and having now the largest manufactory in
England for the make of Cameras, they are enabled to
execute with dispatch any orders they may be favoured
with.’ The fi rm exhibited ‘a Monster camera made by Mr
Ottewill upon Capt. Fowkes’ plan’ at the Photographic
Society’s 1858 exhibition.
An 1865 advertisement (Yearbook of Photography
1865, adv) stated that the fi rm was photographic appara-
tus manufacturer to the governments of ‘England, India,
Italy, Switzerland, the Colonies, etc’ and that a fresh
infusion of capital, together with a general knowledge
of the photographic art would allow it to supply every
article connected therewith of fi rst quality’.
The fi rm advertised regularly throughout its existence
in the British Journal Photographic Almanac and Year-
book of Photography, the Journal of the Photographic
Society and Photographic Notes. The fi rm’s reputation
was exhanced by the double folding sliding camera
that it started making from the early 1850s. The design
was registered formally on 25 May 1853 and attracted
much favourable comment in the photographic press.
The Journal of the Photographic Society (December 21
1853, 149) stated of the design that ‘there is none which
more fully combines the requisite strength and fi rmness
with a high degree of portability and effi ciency.’ The
design remained available into the 1860s. Other cameras
advertised by the fi rm were equally innovative. Ottewill
produced Captain Francis Fowkes’s camera (British
provisional patent number 1295 of 31 May 1856) in
teak for the British government and an Improved Kin-
near-pattern camera in 1859 that he claimed was the
fi rst to introduce a swing back. They also produced
Frederick Scott Archer’s folding camera which has been
registered in 1854. As with other manufacturers Ottewill
produced boxform cameras in single lens and stereo-
scopic versions as well as studio and portrait cameras
from the early 1860s. The fi rm claimed to have been
the fi rst to introduce the swing back in 1859. In 1860
the fi rm produced a miniature camera clearly inspired
by Thomas Skaife’s Pistolgraph of 1859 made from
mahogany which was mounted on a box that contain
all the parts.
Lewis Carroll recorded in his diary for 18 March
1856 that ‘we [Reginald Southey who taught him to take
photographs] went to a maker of the name of Ottewill...
the camera with lens etc will come to just about £15.’
The camera was delivered on 1st May. Carroll’s £15
did not include the chemicals and associated processing
equipment which probably came separately from R W
Thomas of London.
The Ottewill fi rm supplied and advertised cameras
and photographic equipment under it’s own account.
It also supplied several well-known London firms
with cameras to be re-badged under their own name,
including the fi rm of Ross who were primarily lens